BEAUTY: Clothing--Dolce and Gabbana

Well, virtual Milano Moda Uomo is turning out to be a cross between the underwhelming virtual London Fashion Week and the successful virtual Paris Fashion Week. And some of it has been not so virtual:

Etro may have beat them to a physical show (see it here), but as usual, Dolce and Gabbana outdoes everyone with their sheer number of looks (this one clocks in at 105!). And as usual, D and G always look to their own Italy and Italian history for inspiration.

For their Spring Summer '21 collection at Milano Moda Uomo, they looked to the storied Parco dei Principi Hotel overlooking the Gulf of Naples. Originally the site of the Villa Poggio Siracusa built in 1792 by Paul Leopold of Bourbon, Count of Syracuse, it now features a modernist masterpiece by Italian architect Gio Ponti. Opened in 1962, the hotel features an exclusive blue and white color scheme with thirty different blue and white Majolica floor tile designs in both the public spaces and the guest rooms and suites! These tile designs show up on all garments in this collection, and the geometry and modernism serve as a magnificent foil for traditional Classical and Neo-Classical imagery like ruins with Ionic columns, marble statuary of antiquity, and the capitals of Corinthian columns, also in blues and white, naturally.

A Dolce and Gabbana collection is usually a sumptuous affair and I am not sure if it was planned in advance of COVID, but this outdoors-focused seaside collection is, by contrast, so easy, breezy, casual, and wearable...there was even a beautiful sarong for wrapping poolside/post-swim (I have several sarongs I always take with me when I visit Maui, and I would love this one!). And the suiting was extremely causal too...sheer jacket and pants anyone? Yes please.

And speaking of outdoors, a word must be said about the venue, specifically chosen post-virus quarantine. Held at the Humanitas University, the educational arm of the privately funded--but public-treating--medical group for which Dolce and Gabbana have been funding medical scholarships since 2019, the show ended with an uplifting speech by Lorenzo Moretto, immunologist and past president of the European Federation of Immunological Societies.

Take a look at some rooms and a terrace at the Parco dei Principi featuring these wonderful Ponti Majolica floor tiles...

And D and G also produced a very special jacket based on the ceramic "pebble"-encrusted lobby and bar at the Parco dei Prinicpi...

https://us.dolcegabbana.com/